is a mere chaos of facts. It seems to us impossible to estimate too highly his distinction between the reason and the understanding, his assertion of the spiritual in man in connection with a responsible will, his doctrine of ideas as vital and formative truths, and his determination of the place and value of symbols, both in Nature and Revelation, as the expression of higher truths in lower forms, or of an organic whole by means of one of its parts. There was no man living from whom Mr. Irving could have learned so much of a truly spiritual philosophy, nor had Coleridge any disciple who sat at his feet with a deeper reverence for his wisdom, or greater power of apprehending the meaning of his rich and lofty discoursings. There grew up between them a mutual affection and regard of which there are many strong expressions in their writings. In dedicating to Coleridge his Missionary Oration in 1824, Irving declared that “he had been more profitable to his faith in orthodox doctrine, to his spiritual understanding of the Word of God, and to his right conception of the Christian Church than any or all the men with whom he had entertained friendship or conversation." In many of his later writings the same feelings of admiration and gratitude are freely expressed. And Coleridge, on his part, spoke of Mr. Irving in his "Aids to Reflection "as as "a mighty wrestler in the cause of spiritual religion and gospel morality, in whom more than in any other contemporary I seem to see the spirit of Luther revived;" and to the same effect, though more fully, in his "Church and State:" "But I hold withal, and not the less firmly for these discrepancies in our moods and judg ments, that Edward Irving possesses more of the spirit and purposes of the first Reformers, that he has more of the head and heart, the life, the unction, and the genial power of Martin Luther, than any man now alive; yea, than any man of this and the last century." Coleridge differed from his friend in many things, but this was his deliberate estimate of him as a man and a minister of Christ.

The fruit of Mr. Irvings intercourse with this great spiritual philosopher, shows itself in all his subsequent writings; least of all, perhaps, in his Missionary Oration, which, though

full of lofty conceptions and noble eloquence, was too purely idealistic and unpractical. Coleridge, himself, was the most unpractical of mortals, and it was natural that his disciple, in the first joy of his opened vision, should look too exclusively at the ideas of things apart from the realities of life. What Irving learned from him respected living truths and organic forces. He acquired the power of distinguishing between the essential and the accidental, and of detecting the fundamental laws which lie underneath phenomena, and bind them into unity. He learned to ascend from opinions to principles; from the fluctuating notions of the passing hour-fleeting and unsubstantial as the clouds-to the eternal verities which are above all change. From this time forward his preaching took a wider range, and penetrated more deeply to the roots of truth. He was not content with portraying and denouncing the superficial evils of society, but addressed himself to the higher task of bringing out the fundamental ideas of Christianity, and of ascertaining the law and method of the Divine government. Some reviewers have denied that he learned anything from Coleridge, because he did not reproduce his philosophy in its technical phraseology. But he was not an imitator. What he received from others came forth from his own mind in new, often nobler, forms. He received the germ; he gave back the blossom and the fruit. Ile was a learner in the true sense, for he furnished a creative soil for the seed of truth. Coleridge unfolded to him principles in their spiritual form and power, but the development and application of them in the sphere of the Actual, was all his own. With philosophy, merely as such, he had as little concern as John the Baptist or Paul. He felt that his mission was to be a preacher of Christ, and he valued all knowledge so far as it could help him in his work. He did not seek to be an expounder of philosophical systems, but a witness to the truth as it is in Jesus.

What we see in Mr. Irving, after his acquaintance with Coleridge, is the presence of ideas, in the sense of master truths. It is no longer the fleeting appearance, but the organic law, which he is striving to reach. If he discourses of the missionary work, it is the ideal of the missionary that he seeks to de

velop; if he preaches before the Continental Society, which aims at the evangelization of Europe, he labors to detect in their principles the chief forms of error in Christendom, Babylon and Infidelity—the corruption of the truth, and the rejection of it; if he handles the deep mystery of the Trinity, it is by no mere marshaling of proof-texts, but by the profoundest inquiries into the mutual relations of the Persons in the Godhead; if he expounds the Parable of the Sower, he takes the widest range, and unfolds with great thoroughness and masterly skill the various forms of character to which the Gospel is addressed. He is never superficial, though sometimes cumbrous and tedious. You feel that he is always working towards the great underlying foundations of the subject he has in hand, even if he occasionally fails of reaching them.

The chief subjects of his ministry during the six or seven years (say from 1824 to 1831) which may be characterized as the doctrinal period, were the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Human Nature of Christ, the Ordinances of God-the Family, the State, and the Church,-the Apostasy of Christendom, the Coming and Kingdom of Christ, and the Office of the Holy Ghost; though this last belongs rather to a later period of his life. When he went up to London in 1822, he was a true and loyal member of the Church of Scotland, not departing in any respect from her standards, unless (and this he ever strenuously maintained was no deviation) in not holding the dogma that Christ died only for the elect, from which his large and loving heart seems ever to have recoiled, for he would preach the Gospel in all its fulness of grace as a message of mercy to all men. In doctrine he was a Protestant and a Presbyterian, but his instincts were urging him beyond all sectarian narrowness into the largeness of the Church Universal. What he needed at that time was to be led into deeper and more comprehensive views of truth, that his catholic spirit and tendencies might be wisely and safely guided. How providentially this need was supplied we have already seen.

. And what were the doctrines which he taught? In no respect did Mr. Irving believe himself to have departed from the

Orthodox Faith as embodied in the great creeds of the Church. He held in the strongest way to the essential and eternal distinctions of Persons in the one Godhead, to the union of the Divine and human natures in the person of the Son by His birth of the blessed Virgin, to His Atoning Death, His Resurrection, His second personal Coming in glory, and the eternal retributions of the Judgment. The chief peculiarity of his teachings grew out of the prominence which he gave to the Incarnation as the great act of God for the revelation of Himself, and the redemption of fallen man; ever holding it up as the centre of all His works and ways, in the foresight of which everything was created, and out of which, as realized in Christ Jesus, the eternal stability and blessedness of the universe should spring. In his Sermons on the Incarnation, he says,

"I have been led to perceive distinctly, how the Incarnation of the Son of God is the ground and basis of all real knowledge with respect to the Godhead, is the ground and basis of all worship of the Godhead by the creature, and of the creature's own eternal being and blessedness."

And again:

"The same substance is present in the three personalities; the personalities most distinct, the substance most entirely one. And herein is the mystery of the Trinity most excellent and most glorious; and herein are all Sabellian schemes of the Trinity, which do not hold the distinctness of the personalities, devoutly to be abhorred; for, if you keep not the personalities distinct, observe what follows. Confound the personality of the Son with the personality of the Holy Ghost, or deny the latter, which is virtually, yea, and avowedly, too, a most wide-spread heresy; and it immediately follows that every member of Christ, inhabited by the Holy Ghost, is upon an equal footing with Christ;-that every one of us is an Immanuel or God with us, as certain blasphemers affirm;—and straightway there follows upon this a total loss of Christ's great act of love and atonement. Again, confound the personality of the Father with the personality of the Son, which is to all intents and purposes done by worshiping the Son as the ultimate object of worship, instead of regarding Him as High Priest and Intercessor, and you mingle at once God and the creature; and will worship Him, not as a personal God, but as a widely diffused power and omnipresent influence. So that without the doctrine of the Trinity of persons in a unity of substance, the whole scheme of redemption and revelation, of a creation, of a fall, and of a regeneration, is an ineffectual and vain display of power and suffering, which accomplished nothing."

Having thus indicated his general position in respect to doctrine, we will give our readers, before entering into further deails, some glimpses into his domestic and pastoral life in the

great Babel of London. His labors were most abundant, both in the pulpit and amongst his flock. His Sunday services were very long-from two and a half to three hours-so that the wonder is that such crowds continued to throng his church year after year, especially since his sermons were often on the deepest points of theology, where the student in his closet has difficulty enough to follow him.

Nor was he tempted by the pressure of his pulpit duties, and the splendid career that was opening before him as a preacher, to neglect private and personal dealings with the souls that were committed to his care. He had great love and sympathy

But he would
His daily hab

for men, and this gave him ready access to their hearts. He was unwearied in visiting the sick and the sorrowing, and in ministering to the necessities, bodily and spiritual, of the poor; and his self-denying labors among them were in no wise lessened, when, in the spring tide of his popularity, the highest social circles opened to him their attractions. The journal which he kept for a short time in 1825, for the comfort of his wife, then in feeble health in Scotland, shows how busily every day was occupied with pastoral work, and what an overwrought life he must have led. Nothing but great bodily strength and power of endurance, and a mind fertile of resources, could have sustained him under so enormous a pressure. hold the best hours of the day sacred to study. its are thus described by a lady, who was often an inmate of his family: "Mr. Irving's rule was to see any of his friends who wished to visit him without ceremony at breakfast. Eight o'clock was the hour. Family worship first, and then breakfast. At ten he rose, bade every one good-bye, and retired to his study. He gave no audience again till after three." His hospitality was boundless. One instance of his self-sacrificing kindness related by Mrs. Oliphant, (p. 156), interested us the more, for having met, some years after, the same unfortunate "probationer" whom Mr. Irving rescued from a low "public house," and took home, in the family of an American clergyman, who had given him shelter and employment in the same spirit of kindness, and with the same disappointment in the end. A writer in Frazer, soon after his death, bore the following testimony: